


Ready?

by the_ocean_burned



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Christmas fic, Engagement Announcements, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Internalized Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Not Beta Read, Uhm, brief reference to ronan's "suicide attempt" is all, but imma tag it just in case, idk what else to tag, it's 11:30 where i am it still counts, not edited, ronan's entire family is there and they're all gay, sorta???, they're like 20 something aight let them be happy, this is probably trash sorry, this is prolly super oc but i'm taking creative license on this one, uhh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-21 23:42:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13154556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_ocean_burned/pseuds/the_ocean_burned
Summary: Ronan and Adam go to Ireland for Christmas to announce their engagement.





	Ready?

It was no secret that Adam hated flying. Helicopters were terrifyingly loud, and planes were so noisy and crowded that it made Adam want to hide under a blanket. Not to mention that airports were packed and hopelessly confusing places that never failed to make Adam anxious. Generally, Adam didn’t consider flying worth the shortened travel time and opted for driving or walking or taking the bus or literally anything else.

Unfortunately, such forms of relatively-safe land travel weren’t exactly viable options for going from Virginia to Ireland. So, reluctantly, Adam had agreed to fly with Ronan, because as heinous as flying was, spending two weeks on a boat was sure to be worse. Several hours and one metric fuckton of anxiety after arriving at the airport, Adam found himself squashed between Ronan and a balding man who smelled like alcohol and week-old cigarette smoke in the back of a plane. Ronan had wanted to put them in first class, but Adam had put his foot down and told Ronan without room for argument that Adam would be buying his own ticket, so that plan had fallen through. Now Adam was very much regretting his own stubbornness.

At least Ronan had the decency not to say _I told you so._

Adam felt like he was going to die. The overwhelming smell coming off the man next to him was giving Adam a headache, and it was the same smell that had eternally permeated that trailer, and there were too many people in too small a space, and Adam was in a _plane_ and planes _crashed_ and what the _hell_ was he _doing –_

“Hey,” Ronan murmured. At some point while Adam had been spiraling closer and closer to a panic attack, Ronan had leaned over, and now he was close enough that his breath brushed over Adam’s ear and cheek when he spoke. Adam’s world narrowed a little, and he felt a little less ready to implode.

“You’ll be fine, Parrish,” Ronan reassured, carefully prying Adam’s fingers away from their death grip on the arm of the seat. Ronan’s fingers were warm when he slid them between Adam’s. “Relax. There are a hundred thousand plus flights a day, and less than point one fucking percent of them crash. You’ll be perfectly fine, so maybe postpone your freaking out until we’re back on solid ground, yeah?”

Adam nodded and sighed, resting his head against Ronan’s shoulder. They’d been in the air for maybe ten minutes, and it was already hellish. _At least,_ Adam thought, _Ronan is with me._ Ronan was, certainly, preferable to Gansey, who didn’t understand why Adam didn’t like to fly and likely wouldn’t have noticed that Adam was having issues with it at all; or Henry, whose attempt at making this better tended to be distracting people with jokes until the problem went away had never worked for Adam; or Blue, who had never witnessed one of Adam’s panic attacks and wouldn’t have any idea how to even begin to help. No, Adam was beyond grateful that he was with Ronan. Ronan understood, and Ronan knew how to help. That, and Ronan wouldn’t tread on eggshells around Adam for days afterward like the others would if he _did_ break down. Ronan had never been that way, and Adam doubted Ronan would start now, after five years of dating and two months of being engaged.

Adam’s heart did a funny little flip-flop at the reminder that he and Ronan were engaged. It was still hard to get used to, but Adam rather enjoyed the little burst of warmth in his chest every time he looked down and saw the ring on his finger. It was a reminder that he had an amazing fiancée and a home and a family and safety, even though he had spent the majority of his life without such novelties. The rings weren’t all that fancy – just simple silver bands that Ronan had dreamt one night – but they meant the world to Adam, and he knew they meant just as much to Ronan. Adam had seen Ronan pausing in the middle of whatever he was doing to slide the pad of his thumb over the surface of his ring and then smile down at it like it was the most precious thing in the world on multiple occasions.

It was the engagement that had prompted this trip, actually. Every year for Christmas, Ronan flew out to Ireland for a few days to visit his extended family. Adam had never particularly understood the purpose of family reunions and the like, as he had no extended worth visiting or even thinking about himself, but Adam knew family meant everything to Ronan. Declan never bothered going, always claiming he was too busy at work or something along those lines, and Matthew inevitably ended up staying with Declan, so Ronan usually went alone and brought everyone little souvenirs and trinkets. But this year, Ronan had brought up the idea of Adam coming with him. Ronan had given Adam every chance to back out, knowing that large groups of strangers made Adam uncomfortable and that being around big, happy families had a tendency to make Adam introspective and a little sad, but Adam had agreed to go anyway, reluctant only because of the impending plane ride. In all honesty, Adam had been curious about Ronan’s family for a while. The idea of potentially hundreds more people as vibrant and intense and vastly unique as the Lynch brothers awed and intrigued Adam, and he truly did want to meet them. That, and it would be incredibly unfair to Ronan to make him announce his engagement all by himself. Besides, Ronan always came back from Ireland a little brighter than he’d been when he left, and Adam knew Ronan adored his family, so Adam would have been lying if he said he wasn’t excited to meet them people who made Ronan so intensely happy every year without fail. Also, the fact that Ronan’s trips to Ireland always resulted in Ronan having a slightly more noticeable Irish accent that lingered for a few months certainly wasn’t a downside.

Just because Adam was looking forward to this trip, however, didn’t mean he wasn’t anxious about it. Of _course_ he was anxious. Part of it was because this was _Ronan’s_ family, and Adam could only imagine that they’d all be wild cards just as much as Ronan had been for those first few months of his and Adam’s tentative friendship. Part of it was because Adam had never been outside the U.S., and he was afraid he would look as much like an outsider as he was sure to feel. Part if it was that Adam already had a strenuous relationship with the concept of family, even after all those years, and wasn’t sure how he’d react to extended exposure to normal, healthy family dynamics. Objectively, Adam knew that he was loved, and he had long abandoned the idea that he was incapable of loving others, but there were still days where Adam was afraid. Even years after the fact, Adam still forgot sometimes that he was deaf in his left ear or forgot at the end of a long day of work that he didn’t have to go back to that trailer park and deal with his father’s endless rage or that he was, in all technicality, traumatized. Despite having successfully avoided his father since he had graduated high school, Robert Parrish still haunted his son, manifesting in Adam’s occasional bouts of irrepressible, irrational anger and the way Adam still sometimes flinched if a door closed too hard or if someone raised their voice too loud. Adam could still feel his father’s influence looming over him and smell the oil beneath his fingernails and hear dust rattling in his lungs, betraying his roots with every breath and movement, and he was afraid Ronan’s family would, too.

Luckily, the flight went smoothly enough that it didn’t add to Adam’s anxiety any more than it already had merely by involving being several thousand feet in the air in a several-ton metal death trap kept aloft by a little physics and a whole lot of luck. There was no turbulence that Adam felt, and the food was decent-ish for once – Adam had eaten worse, anyway – and there were, at the very least, no crying children. The man next to Adam kept shooting judgmental looks at Adam and Ronan, but Ronan’s death glare was more than enough to keep him quiet. At some point, Adam must have fallen asleep, because one minute he was closing his eyes and the next thing he knew, Ronan was shaking his shoulder and the other man was gone.

“We’re here,” Ronan said, confirming Adam’s suspicions. Although Ronan wasn’t smiling outright, there was a brightness in his eyes that betrayed his excitement. Adam’s heart felt warm; ‘cute’ wasn’t a word he used often to describe Ronan Lynch, but it fit right then.

After an hour and a half of chasing their luggage from baggage claim to baggage claim, because the airline had somehow forgotten which flight their bags were supposed to be on and subsequently but them on the wrong plain, Ronan and Adam finally made it outside. The cool air and the light rain was more than welcome after the suffocating heat of the packed airport. Ronan handed Adam his phone to find out where Ronan’s uncles would be picking them up, keeping one hand on the small of Adam’s back to direct him around the groups of people clumped on the sidewalk. Every time Adam relayed one of the usually-sarcastic messages, Ronan’s smile grew a little. By the time they found the car, Ronan was grinning, bright and fierce in a way that Adam usually associated with Matthew. Suddenly, Adam was incredibly glad he’d come, if it meant he got to see Ronan so visibly happy outside the confined space of the Barns. Adam would suffer through a hundred plane rides to make Ronan smile like that.

“Ronan!” One of Ronan’s uncles, a tall man with peach fuzz as dark as Ronan’s hair and eyes so dark they looked almost black. For a moment, Adam was reminded of Persephone and her scrying-bowl eyes and something inside him ached, but then Ronan laughed and the feeling was gone.

“Cadan!” Ronan crowed as the uncle caught him in a headlock. “Let me go, you old geezer!”

“I don’t know,” Cadan teased, even as he let Ronan go. “You’re the one who called me old.”

Adam laughed softly. Ronan turned to Adam with an impish grin and a glint in his eyes that usually meant either trouble or laughing until their ribs burned or both. _“Et tu, Brute?”_

“All right, Gansey,” Adam teased, and Ronan groaned.

“Fuck you. His nerd shit is contagious.”

“Says the man who spends hours reading random Wikipedia articles when you’re bored,” Adam hummed, leaning over to press a kiss to Ronan’s cheek.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you blush so hard,” Ronan’s other uncle commented from inside the car. Ronan grumbled indignantly, but his cheeks were, indeed, a rather pretty shade of pink.

“Aw, Donovan, you’ve embarrassed him,” Cadan cackled with mock sympathy.

Donovan shrugged, entirely unapologetic. “You have no room to talk, love.”

Cadan tugged one of Donovan’s hands out the window and pressed a kiss to the back of it. “True,” he conceded. Adam thought that maybe the blush was a genetic thing, because Cadan had just turned the same shade of red as Ronan.

“Damn flirts,” Ronan grumbled, though it was easy to tell he wasn’t really annoyed. “Get a room.”

Cadan just laughed. “We’ve been married for ten years. I’m allowed to flirt with my husband, you little shit.”

Adam laughed, feeling warm and oddly light. Even after spending time at 300 Fox Way and at Gansey’s parents’ house, seeing families act like this – gentle teasing and affectionate touches instead of enraged insults and physical violence, easy comfort in place of tense fear of one another – still felt foreign to Adam. It wasn’t as strange an idea anymore, but seeing it in practice still threw Adam for a loop. For a brief moment, the old fear seized Adam: _I do not know this. How could I possibly fit in with all this love when love is something I’ve never had?_ He took a slow breath and pushed the thought away. Although he may not have grown up loved, Adam knew his friends loved him like family, and Ronan loved Adam so fiercely and completely that it was almost as if Ronan was trying to make up for everything Adam had missed out on during childhood.

“You all right, kid?” Cadan inquired, apparently having caught Adam’s moment of emotional turmoil.

Adam nodded. “Yes, I’m fine. Thank you, sir.”

Cadan barked a laugh. “‘Sir?’ No need for that; just use my name. ‘Sir’ makes me feel old.”

Donovan smiled and craned around in his sear to look at Ronan, who was still trying to shove uncooperative suitcases into the trunk and swearing loudly enough to garner odd looks from little old ladies passing by. “How the hell did you manage to get such a nice boy to go out with you?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Ronan grumbled. Adam knew what had gone unsaid. Once, Gansey had asked Ronan the same thing, and Ronan had replied, _I ask myself that every damn day._

Adam smiled quietly to himself.

“Aw, shit, I forgot to introduce myself properly,” Cadan exclaimed, smacking himself in the forehead with the heel of his hand. He smiled, then, and extended a hand to Adam. “Cadan Lynch. The nerd in the car is my husband, Donny.”

“This nerd in the car can introduce himself just fine, thank you,” Donny teased, turning back around to face the front of the car and smiling at Adam as well. “And I’d prefer it if you just called me Donovan.”

“I’m the only one who gets to call you ‘Donny,’” Cadan cooed, lacing his fingers with Donovan’s an grinning cheekily.

Donovan rolled his eyes, though a fond smile was tugging at the corners of his mouth. “While true, you don’t need to advertise it.”

Ronan swore cheerfully and slammed the trunk closed. “I win, fuckers,” he snarled at the suitcases through the back window, the car door for Adam.

“Such a gentleman,” Adam teased as he slid into the back seat, earning a sarcastic snort from Cadan, who had reclaimed the passenger seat.

Ronan rolled his eyes with glorious disdain. “Again, I say: shut the fuck up.”

Donovan laughed and started the car.

Adam hardly noticed the fact that the drive was an hour long. Cadan and Ronan snarked back and forth at each other the entire time, though Adam could tell there was absolutely no hostility whatsoever on either side. It was like watching Blue and Ronan fight as some odd form of affection, but more entertaining by a long shot. Blue didn’t know any of the embarrassing things Ronan had done as a child, and Cadan did. In retaliation, Ronan told stories about stupid things Cadan had done or said, usually when drunk. Occasionally, Adam or Donovan would throw in an anecdote of their own, and the entire car would dissolve into laughter for a minute or two. It was comforting in a way Adam had never expected, and he enjoyed every second of it, despite the lingering exhaustion from the flight.

Eventually, Donovan pulled up to a farmhouse that was an amalgamation of architectures and time periods. Suddenly, Adam knew exactly where Niall had gotten his inspiration from when dreaming the Barns. The windows were all lit, and the house practically glowed with life, especially in comparison to the wet grey-green of the fields around it. This place reeked of magic and nostalgia and happiness and love, just like the Barns did, and Adam found this farm just as enchanting as he found the Barns. The only difference was that that Barns only _felt_ like it was in a different country than Henrietta. This Lynch farm _was_ in a different country. Children shrieked excitedly from somewhere inside the house, the sound ringing over the driveway as clear as a bell.

Suddenly, Adam’s anxiety was back in full force. Ronan must have noticed hits, because he set a hand on Adam’s back and leaned closer.

“It’s gonna be loud and crowded when we get in there,” Ronan warned, “and everyone and their damn dog is going to want to talk to you or ask you a question or some shit. I’ll try to make sure they go easy on you, though, and we’ll head upstairs and claim a bedroom to make sure we don’t have to share with anyone else before too much else, okay?”

Adam nodded, leaning gratefully into Ronan’s side. God, was he supposed to be this nervous? Probably not. Fuck.

“We’re not carrying your shit in!” Cadan called. It was rather unnecessary, since he and Donovan were already halfway to the house.

Ronan rolled eyes. “Fuck you too, assholes!”

Cadan grinned impishly and tapped two fingers to his temple in a mock salute as he and Donovan disappeared into the house. Ronan huffed fondly and laughed under his breath. He and Adam wrestled their suitcases from the car, hauled them up to the door, then paused for a moment.

“You ready?” Ronan asked.

“No,” Adam answered honestly, because the truth was always the only option with Ronan.

“Me neither,” Ronan said cheerfully as he swung the door open.

Instantly, Adam’s senses were assaulted by a barrage of information. Children raced through the halls, squealing with delight as they chased each other between adults’ legs and around corners. Adults laughed raucously and talked over each other, shifting a step or two to the side every now and again to avoid a stray child. Somewhere in the house, someone was cooking something that smelled strongly of pepper. It was strange when combined with the scent of whatever chocolatey concoction was being baked at the same time. It was sudden and overwhelming and Adam felt off-balance for a second, like a rug had been yanked out from under his feet with no warning. Even ever-crowded 300 Fox Way wasn’t this chaotic.

Ronan led Adam through the house, neatly dodging small children running at their legs and older relatives who Adam assumed were cousins trying to accost them for conversation in the hallways. Eventually, they found a room that was still vacant and quickly tossed their bags onto the bed.

“Fuck,” Ronan sighed, running his palm over his scalp. “There are more people here this year than there were last year.”

“And how many people knew I was going to be here this year?” Adam asked dryly. If Ronan’s relatives were anywhere near as invested in their family’s lives as Ronan was, Adam wouldn’t put it past any of them to show up just to find out if the kid Ronan was dating – was _engaged_ to – was worth Ronan’s time. Adam felt vaguely nauseous. He had never done well under scrutiny, and it was only now setting in how many people would be intent on watching his every move.

“Well, I told my grandmother,” Ronan admitted, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly, “and she’s not the best at keeping things like that a secret.”

“Great,” Adam sighed, a bit of his anxiety permeating his voice despite his best efforts.

“Hey,” Ronan hummed, coming up behind Adam and wrapping his arms around Adam’s waist. “Don’t worry so much. You’ve got abso-fucking-lutely nothing to worry about, anyway. They’ll love you.”

Adam laughed a little. He wished he had Ronan’s confidence.

“I’m being serious, you shit, don’t laugh,” Ronan grumbled, though there was no real heat to his words. “They will. They’ll love you, because they know I love you, and they also know that I’ll kick all their asses if they so much as think anything bad about you.”

Adam relaxed into Ronan, lacing their fingers. “And you say you’re not a sweetheart,” Adam teased, pressing a kiss to the back of one of Ronan’s hands. Ronan’s indignant sigh puffed against the Adam’s neck.

“Fuck off, Parrish,” Ronan grumbled. Adam just laughed. Ronan blew a raspberry against the side of Adam’s neck in retaliation.

“Ew!” Adam cried, pulling away from Ronan. “Consider the moment ruined, asshole.”

“What moment?” Ronan asked smugly.

“Fuck you,” Adam replied and hit Ronan lightly on the arm, but he was smiling. It never failed to amaze Adam that he had ever thought Ronan was a heartless bastard. If someone had told Adam on his first day at Aglionby that by the end of high school, he would not only be willing to stay in Virginia but dating Ronan Lynch, of all people, Adam would have laughed in their face or dismissed them outright. And yet, here he was, engaged to the very same man he’d thought  of as cruel all those years ago, in Ireland and happier than he’d ever been.

All in all, Adam was glad it had turned out this way.

“Let’s get this show on the road, then,” Adam said, squaring his shoulders and leading the way out of the room.

The next few hours were a whirlwind of faces and conversations and introductions that Adam would only vaguely remember later. A few stood out: Eamon, the man with paint splattered all over his face, somehow, despite the fact that there was no fresh paint anywhere in the house, as far as Adam knew; Abby, the four-year-old girl who was, as far as Adam could tell, the only one of Ronan’s relatives who was blonde; Fergus, the oldest of Ronan’s cousins, who had eternally ruddy cheeks as if he’d been drinking despite the fact that Adam had yet to see the man around alcohol and the thickest accent of everyone Adam had talked to; Brighid, one of Adam’s teenaged cousins who dressed like a nun, swore like a sailor, and almost certainly had knives tucked away in her sleeves and her skirt. There was Catriona, who was soft-spoken and somehow always managed to have fresh flowers in her hair, and her wife Nora who was loud and brash and won the arm-wrestling contest one of the younger cousins set up. There was Keagan, who pretended to be a badass – Adam heavily suspected that Keagan was trying to act the way Ronan looked – but was incapable of refusing his little sister, Eva, anything.

Out of all of them, Ronan’s grandmother stood out the most to Adam. Morrigan Lynch was a short woman; she barely came up to Adam’s chest. For half a second, he wondered if he’d finally come across one of the few people over the age of thirty who was shorter than Blue. Adam immediately made a mental note to never mention that thought in Blue’s presence. Ronan’s grandmother was fierce, too, and Adam found himself noticing behaviours that Ronan had likely picked up from Morrigan. She had the same way of staring straight through people, and Ronan’s deeply unsettling glares and silences had almost certainly been a hand-me-down from his grandmother.

Adam wondered what had happened to his own grandmothers. He hadn’t heard a word from either of them in years, but he couldn’t remember ever going to a funeral, either. Of course, Robert Parrish would never have bothered with something like his mother’s funeral. He had a son to beat and a wife to cheat on, and those two tasks had taken priority over nearly every other thing in his life. Adam stopped that train of thought in its tracks before it could make him physically ill.

Morrigan, though she was loud and liked to swear – again, Adam could see where Ronan had gotten it, assuming it hadn’t been from his ever-absent father – she had the gentlest hands Adam had ever seen. Every time she helped bandage a scraped knee or paper cut or smoothed down a child’s stray cowlick, Adam thought of Persephone taking the broken boy he had been and not only helping him piece himself back together, but helping him become something more.

All in all, Adam liked Morrigan.

As the days passed and Adam grew more accustomed to the entirety, or at least something close to it, of the Lynch family, he found himself noticing another of Ronan’s cousins; a young boy, maybe ten or eleven. Although the boy had originally blended into the crowd with his dark hair and dark eyes and quiet disposition, Adam found his eyes catching on the child more and more often. There was something about the bot that worried Adam. He wasn’t sure what it was that was. Was it the bags under his eyes that were far darker than they should have been for someone the boy’s age? Was it the way the boy slouched in on himself constantly, despite Morrigan’s remarks about having a bad back when he got old, as if he were trying to hide, or at least make himself smaller? Was it the boy’s tendency to fiddle with his hands incessantly; the way his fingers were often red from wringing them so much? Was it the way he tended to stick to himself and lurk in the corners of a room instead of playing with the other kids, even when they begged him to do so? Adam didn’t know. All he knew was that every time he caught sight of the kid, a fiercely protective instinct that Adam hadn’t even known existed before he’d met Opal constricted his lungs and made it hard to breathe. Eventually, it got to be too much, and Adam broached the subject with Ronan.

“Oh, you mean Brady?” Ronan asked, and Adam nodded, even though he wasn’t sure. Ronan likely knew who Adam was talking about, even if Adam himself didn’t.

“Does he usually look so… tired?” Adam inquired tentatively, afraid he was overstepping his bounds. But these were the people who were about to be his family, so he was allowed to worry, right?

“Now that you mention it,” Ronan hummed thoughtfully, “he has been weirdly quiet this year. Normally he seems to think that I’m a fucking jungle gym.”

Adam couldn’t help but laugh a little at the mental image, and it earned him a slap on the shoulder.

“I’ll talk to him,” Ronan sighed, “as long as you come with. I’m shit with pep talks.”

“I know,” Adam laughed and Ronan glared at him.

They found Brady in the library. The library was in one of the newer parts of the house, and Adam loved it. What wasn’t to love about a massive room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on every wall, all filled with books? But right then, Adam couldn’t find it in him to be awed by all the books. Brady was curled up in one of the chairs, knees drawn to his chest and his hands pressed to his ears. Adam’s chest ached; he knew that posture far too well. Night after night curled in the corner of his bedroom, trying to block out his father’s screaming, had resulted in Adam becoming far too familiar with the way Brady was sitting than he liked. Brady was trying to hide from something – that much was clear – but Adam didn’t think the poor boy could effectively hide from whatever was plaguing him. Adam knew from experience that it was night impossible to hide from something in your own mind.

Ronan tapped his knuckles against the doorframe; the knock seemed louder than it should have in the large, empty room. The noise got Brady’s attention and he jolted, his head snapping up so fast that Adam was afraid that the boy’s neck would break for an irrational moment. Adam breathed out a soft, concerned sigh when he realized he could see the whites of Brady’s eyes from all the way across the room. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Brady was terrified.

“Hey, kid,” Ronan said, moving to crouch beside the chair. “Everything all right?”

“I’m fine,” Brady mumbled, but he was avoiding eye contact almost religiously. Ronan arched an eyebrow disbelievingly.

“You know what I think of liars,” Ronan admonished, and Brady flinched.

“I know,” Brady muttered, scrubbing a hand over his face. “But I said I’m _fine,_ so I’m fucking _fine,_ okay?”

“Don’t fucking swear,” Ronan said absently, but his face had darkened in a way that couldn’t have been caused by Brady’s use of the word _fuck._

“Brady Quinn Lynch, what the _fuck_ are these?” Ronan demanded, grabbing Brady by the wrist. Brady yelped and tried to pull away, and Adam finally figured out why when Brady’s sleeve slid down to reveal a network of thin red lines all along his forearm. Adam’s stomach dropped. The marks on Brady’s arm were identical to the one on Ronan’s, except for the fact that Brady’s were considerably fresher; the newest ones looked maybe a day old at most. That, and Ronan’s scars had been put there by his nightmares, not his own hand. Ronan looked haunted.

“Let me go!” Brady exclaimed, and Ronan did. Brady pulled his sleeve back up and tucked his arm against his chest, but Adam knew there was no way Ronan would let this go now that he’d seen what he had. Adam certainly wouldn’t.

“What. The fuck. Was that?” Ronan snarled through his teeth. He sounded furious, but Adam knew the rage was just concern, felt so intensely that it had to be expressed in a way that would appropriately convey the strength of the emotion. Brady still flinched away.

“It’s not what you think!” Brady protested, his eyes fixed on the floor and his hands shaking.

Ronan and Adam both froze. Adam was seventeen again, yet another bruise blooming on his cheek, listening to Gansey choke out the words _Ronan tried to kill himself_ over the phone, hearing Ronan growl in the background, _It wasn’t that, damn it. It’s not what you think, I fucking told you that already._

Adam flicked his eyes from Brady to Ronan, meeting Ronan’s gaze evenly. There was a question in Ronan’s eyes: _Is it possible?_ Adam shrugged. _It’s worth checking into._

Ronan nodded. “Then explain it to me,” he told Brady.

Brady was shaking his head before Ronan had even finished his sentence. “No, I c-can’t,” he started. “I – no.” He bowed his head, sounding close to tears.

For a long moment, Ronan was silent. Then he sighed and pulled his own sleeve down, baring the silvery scars that lined his arm. “I’m the same,” Ronan said quietly, and Adam knew what this was costing Ronan. Even though they hadn’t been intentional or his fault, Ronan was still self-conscious and ashamed of them sometimes. There was a reason he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt that day in lieu of his usual biker tank. “So I guaran-damn-tee that you can explain yours to me, kid.”

Brady looked like he’d been sucker punched. He reached out and, after Ronan had nodded his approval, Brady tentatively brushed his fingertips over Ronan’s scars. A muscle twitched in Ronan’s jaw. Adam finally moved away from the door to kneel beside Ronan. Ronan shot Adam a grateful glance, but Brady didn’t appear to notice Adam’s approach. Or, if Brady did notice, he was too engrossed in Ronan’s scars to show any sign of it.

“How did you get yours?” Brady whispered. Ronan’s fingers curled anxiously around Adam’s.

“Nightmares,” Ronan answered honestly, because there had never been any other option.

Brady went very still suddenly. Ronan and Adam exchanged another glance.

“Where’d yours come from, kid?”

Swallowing hard, Brady rested his fingers a little more firmly on Ronan’s arm. “Nightmares,” he parroted softly.

“What kind of nightmare?”

Brady was silent for a long moment. “Snake-people,” he breathed. And it was the same tone that Ronan had used when he explained his night horrors to Adam – all primal fear and quiet grief. “They – their hands are like claws and then they grab me and when I wake up, I-I have… these.” Brady gestured hopelessly at his arms. “Are mine gonna scar, too?”

“Maybe,” Ronan sighed quietly. “But… there are other things, aren’t there? Other than the cuts. Things that… things that you dream about, and then when you wake up, you have them.

Brady’s eyes were wet with tears when he nodded. “Yeah,” he replied lowly. “I… yeah. T-toys, or flowers. A… a dragon scale, once. They – I have them in my hands, in my dream, and then I wake up, and they’re still there, even though they shouldn’t be.”

A tear slid slowly down Brady’s cheek. His breath hitched. “Am I going crazy? Am I going to be locked up?”

“No,” Ronan said firmly. “You are not going crazy. I told you already, I’m the same. Do you think I’m crazy?”

“No,” sniffled Brady.

“See? I promise, kid you’re not going to be locked up. You’re just as sane as the rest of us.”

Brady for smiled for a second, then clenched his jaw and looked away again. “Then why does it hurt?”

Suddenly Adam wasn’t sure this was a conversation he was meant to be privy to. This was between dreamers, and Adam didn’t fit into that particular category. But then Ronan’s hand tightened around Adam’s, and he squeezed back. Ronan wanted him there, so Adam would stay.

“I asked myself that for a long time,” Ronan admitted, pulling his sleeve back down with his teeth. “But it doesn’t have to hurt. Your n – your snake people, they’re just you.”

When he caught Brady’s confused expression, Ronan blew out a breath and tried again. He had a death grip on Adam’s hand. “The monsters are just the all the things you don’t like about yourself put into a body. They won’t hurt you unless you let them.”

Brady sniffled again. “Does that mean I have to fight them?”

Ronan laughed a little and shook his head. “No, you don’t have to fight them. Maybe try to be their friend? Give ‘em a flower or something.”

“A flower?”

“Or let them play with the toys you said you dream about. Look, Brady, the monsters in my head didn’t stop hurting me until after –”

Ronan cut himself off and Adam knew why. The rest of the sentence wasn’t hard for Adam to guess: _until after Kavinsky._

“Until something really bad happened,” Ronan finished half-heartedly. “But it doesn’t have to be that way for you.”

Brady nodded, wiping his eyes and beginning to smile. “Like I made friends with the trees?”

Ronan blinked, then nodded slowly. “Yeah. Do your trees have a name?”

“The forest likes to be called _Trealaimh,”_ Brady said with a shrug. Adam didn’t know what that meant, but it sounded like Gaelic to his untrained ears. “And sometimes they call me their _brionlsid.”_

Ronan nodded again. Adam knew he’d been thrown for a complete loop by the entire conversation. “All right, then. Ask the trees to help you make friends with the monsters, then.”

Beaming, Brady hoped off the chair. “Okay! Thanks, Ronan!”

“No problem, kiddo,” Ronan called after Brady as he zipped out of the room.

“Fuck,” Ronan breathed once Brady was gone, slowly slumping sideways into Adam until his head was resting on Adam’s shoulder. “I didn’t realize – I thought I was the only one.”

“But you aren’t,” Adam pointed out quietly, “and I think you just gave that little boy the best advice he could’ve gotten.”

“I just told him what I wish I’d been told,” Ronan muttered, his voice far away and his eyes clouded over as he lost himself to thought.

Adam didn’t have a way to reply to that in a way that seemed appropriate, so he just rested his head lightly atop Ronan’s. They sat like that for a while, silently allowing the knowledge that there were more dreamers out there than either of them had thought sink in slowly.

The rest of the week flew by, and before Adam knew what was happening, it was Christmas Eve. The kids were all bouncing off the walls – more than usual, anyway – either from all the sugary baked goods or the excitement about the holiday; Adam couldn’t tell. Either way, the house was almost certainly several times louder than it had been the day before, and it only got steadily worse as the day went on. By midnight, most of the children were still up, with the exception of the teenagers who were too tired from dealing with their younger siblings and cousins all day long to bother staying up later than usual and the kids who were three years old or younger and had been persuaded to go to bed around ten. As such, those who were neither recruited by Morrigan to help with last-minute food preparation in the kitchen nor deemed stealthy enough to help sneak past presents past the room all the children had been corralled in were tasked with distracting aforementioned children until they could be herded safely upstairs, their belief in Santa successfully preserved for another year. This meant that it was only Ronan, Adam, and Cadan in a room full of at least thirty small children that were far too energetic for that time of night.

Rona, who was surprisingly good with children who weren’t products of his dreams, decided to teach them how to play Sharks and Minnows, in hopes of helping them burn off some of that excess energy in a relatively short time period. Luckily, they were in a room that was big enough for this to be a viable solution. Adam wasn’t entirely sure _why_ a farmhouse needed a pool room the size of a small school gymnasium to contain a single lone pool table, but he wasn’t going to question it for the moment. It was convenient, and that was really all that mattered for the time being.

Since Ronan had taken complete charge of the game, Adam and Cadan stood on either side of the door frame, partially to track the progress of what Ronan had sarcastically dubbed ‘Mission Impersonate Santa Claus,’ and partially to make sure no stray children left the room before they were supposed to.

For the first few rounds of the game, they just watched in silence. Adam couldn’t help but find Ronan’s fondness for his little cousins endearing; Adam would have joined his boyfriend, but he still had a hard time convincing himself that he wouldn’t turn violent out of nowhere around kids a lot of the time. Besides, he was content to just watch, anyway. It gave him a better vantage point to see Ronan light up when the kids got really into the game or started laughing so hard a few of the more dramatically-inclined ones ended up on the floor.

“Thank you,” Cadan said out of nowhere after a while.

“For what?” Adam asked, confused.

“For whatever you did to make him smile like that again,” Cadan responded, nodding over to Ronan. “It’s been a hard few years for the kid, and for a while, we were afraid that we’d lost him entirely. But then one year he showed up and started ranting about the infuriatingly pretty freckled boy who was kicking his ass handily in his Latin class – his words, not mine, by the way – and we knew. Well, Donny and I did, anyway.”

Adam’s ears felt warm. “I don’t think I did near as much for him as you think I did.”

Cadan waved a hand dismissively at Adam. “I think you did more than you’re giving yourself credit for.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Ronan was… crushed, to say the absolute least, when Niall died. It was understandable, but it was still hard to see. He actually stopped talking completely for a couple months. And then everything with Declan and Aurora happened and – well, you know how he was back then.”

Adam did know. Ronan had been scared and violently self-destructive and too proud to allow himself to ask for help, so he had ended up trying to drown himself in the growl of an engine and alcohol and his own self-hatred. When they’d first met, Adam hadn’t even been able to look Ronan in the eyes.

“But then he started to get over that,” Cadan continued, “and that was great, but it wasn’t hard to tell that he was still hurting. I don’t think… Look. Niall – I loved my brother, really, but he wasn’t the most accepting man. He was convinced that I just hadn’t found the right girl to settle down with, yet, and kept telling me that I was only dating Donny because I was “too insecure” to date women.”

Cadan sighed heavily, his expression souring at the sting of remembered wounds for a moment. “Niall wasn’t real great, that way, and I can’t imagine he wouldn’t have tried to pass that mindset on to his kids. I mean, look at Declan. Obviously it wasn’t all that effective – Matthew is a right little angel, and Ronan sure isn’t the perfect little heterosexual I’m sure Niall wanted him to be – but hearing that sort of bullshit from Niall can’t have been any good for Ronan. I remember that the year Donny and I got married, Ronan pulled me aside and asked me how I was okay with being gay. At first, I thought he was just following in his father’s footsteps, and I was ready to give him the lecture I’d prepared about open-mindedness and all that, but then… he looked scared. And I knew that Niall’s judgements had taken more of a toll on Ronan than they ever had on me.”

Adam had already known most of this, but it still hurt to hear. Even after having sat with Ronan through the days when he’d said he felt wrong and dirty and fundamentally broken, and even after those days were long gone, the fact that Ronan – amazing, fierce, loyal, impossible Ronan Lynch – had ever hated himself just because he existed as a person his father wouldn’t have approved of made Adam want to cry or punch Niall Lynch.

Cadan shook his head and smiled over at Adam. “Anyway, long story short, I haven’t seen him this happy and comfortable with himself in years. So, thank you.”

Adam shook his head. “I don’t deserve all the credit for that.”

“But you’re getting it, because you’re the one who’s here with him,” Cadan replied, and Adan could only laugh in reply.

It was nearly three in the morning by the time Adam and Ronan were finally able to collapse into bed. Adam barely managed to lean over and kiss Ronan good night before he was out cold.

And then the first of the elated shrieks rang through the house at barely six o’clock. Adam contemplated homicide for a moment, but quickly dismissed the idea on the grounds that it was too much effort for this early in the morning.

“Little fuckers,” Ronan grumbled, pressing his face into Adam’s shoulder. Adam mumbled something incomprehensible in tired agreement.

Christmas day passed in a blur of bright smiles and coffee mugs that were full one minute and empty the next and brightly-wrapped boxes and a thousand of Ronan’s little gestures of sleep-deprived affection, like holding Adam’s hand under the table or wrapping an arm around Adam’s waist or kissing Adam’s cheek every few minutes just because he could. Before Adam had even had the chance to wake up all the way, it was time for Christmas dinner.

“You ready?” Ronan asked lowly as they took their seats at the table.

Anxiety burst through Adam, and he was suddenly much less sleepy than he had been. He’d been so caught up in everything else that he had completely forgotten that he and Ronan were planning on announcing their engagement in probably less than five minutes.

“No,” Adam whispered back.

“Me neither,” Ronan admitted with a grin.

Morrigan lead the prayer, then Ronan stood and tugged Adam up with him before everyone could start reaching for food. Every single person in the room was watching them, and Adam felt each and every gaze on him like a hundred little needles.

“Adam and I are engaged,” Ronan announced, and Adam would have grinned if he hadn’t been so thoroughly anxious. Of course Ronan wouldn’t bother with long speeches or beat around the bush, especially not with something as important and huge as this.

There was a split second of dead silence, and then the table exploded into chatter. Adam heard a lot of generic congratulations and well-wishes, but there was also an overwhelming amount of questions. This had been expected, of course, but it still knocked Adam a little off-balance. What there weren’t any of, however, was negative reactions, which was what Adam had feared most.

“Enough!” Morrigan shouted after a minute of deafening clamour. “Eat, you nosy fucks. You can pry into their lives and get all the details you want _after_ this table has been cleared.”

Laughing, Adam and Ronan sat back down. Ronan’s face was flushed, and Adam was sure his no better.

“This’ll be an eventful evening,” Adam remarked and Ronan cackled joyously.

“Yes, Parrish, I believe it will.”

**Author's Note:**

> ahahahaaa this was 7k words of word vomit i apologize if it wasn't coherent lmao i'm running on chocolate-covered espresso beans and not much else


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